A Practical Guide for Students and Teachers Tim David University of Manchester, UK Leena Patel University of Manchester, UK K Burdett University of Manchester, UK Patangi Rangachari McMaster University, Canada £22.50,  978-1-85315-430-0,  104pp,  Paperback,  February 1999

The essence of problem-based learning is that a group of 8-10 students decide for themselves what they need to study after discussing some trigger material, such as a written problem. After a few days of self-study, they meet to share, compare, and relate what they have found to the original trigger material, and to see if they have covered enough ground.

Problem-based learning, as currently employed in medical education, originated at McMaster University in Canada, and has been adopted by about a quarter of all medical schools in the USA and about a half of those in Canada, with Europe and the rest of the world rapidly catching up. Despite the widespread use of problem-based learning in higher education (including medicine, dentistry, health sciences, law, economics and mathematics), there has up till now been is a serious lack of published practical advice for both students and teachers.

This is a "how to do it" book, intended for students, teachers and those still at school who are trying to decide whether to choose a medical school that uses problem-based learning or one that sticks to a more traditional approach to medical education.

Find out:

what problem-based learning is and how it works, and how it fits in with what we know about how adults learn

how to design problems and trigger material

how a tutorial group works

how self-assessment, peer-assessment and tutor assessment are undertaken.

Students will find practical advice such as how to make the transition from a traditional school education to a much more self-directed kind of activity, in which it might be easy to get lost without some practical guidance at the outset. The book also contains practical advice for teachers, who have the job of helping students adapt and cope with the culture shock of no longer being told what to do. The book concludes with chapters on serious pitfalls and a brief discussion of what problem-based learning can be expected to achieve

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